The Tin Collectors Page 3

  “I do.”

  “This tape-recorded interview is for use in an Internal Affairs investigation only. For purposes of department statute-of-limitations requirements, today, April sixteenth, will be the due date of this inquiry. If no action is taken within a year of this date, the investigation will officially be determined to be closed. Is this interview being conducted at a convenient time and under circumstances you find acceptable?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you aware that the nature of this interview is to determine if the escalated force that resulted in Lieutenant Molar’s death was within departmental use-of-force guidelines?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It is April sixteenth, at five-seventeen A.M. We are in the main conference room, on the ninth floor of Parker Center. Present is the interviewer, Deputy Chief Thomas Clark Mayweather. Also present is the officer being interviewed, Sergeant One Shane Scully. Witnessing the interview is Captain Bud Halley. In accordance with departmental guidelines, it is noted that no more than two interrogators are present. Okay”—Mayweather paused and glanced at a crib card in front of him—“Section 202 governs this part of the administrative process and establishes procedures for the completion of a chronological log. If you could take care of that, Captain Halley? And then if you could get us a fresh DR number to file the case under.” A DR number was a Division of Records number, issued in all nonarrest reports.

  Bud Halley nodded then took out a pad and pen to begin a chronology.

  “Shane, if you could just start at the beginning and tell us what happened this morning…Don’t leave anything out. Give us approximate times if you can. I want to get it all down on tape because the preliminary interview will be an important part of the record, if anything more comes of this later.”

  “Okay.” Shane cleared his throat and began to tell exactly what had happened, starting with the wake-up call from Barbara at 2:16 A.M., followed by his call to Longboard Kelly. He told how he drove to Shell Avenue, found the front door open, saw Molar beating his wife. He related the conversation that ensued, telling how he tried to settle it down. Then how Molar, moving toward him, swung the baton at his head, hit him with his fist, pulled his gun, and fired. Shane explained how he returned fire, killing the huge LAPD lieutenant with his 9mm Beretta Mini-Cougar, just moments before Unit X-ray Twelve arrived.

  When he finished, he looked up at Mayweather, who was making notes on a pad, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “That’s everything,” Shane finished.

  “Tell me about your relationship with Raymond Molar.”

  “Uh…well, he was sort of a mentor, I guess you’d call it. I met him when I went through the Academy. He was conducting a self-defense lecture. He and I were at the same table for lunch. We sort of hit it off, gravitated to each other. He did three street-combat classes while I was there, and we became friends. After I graduated, I ended up in Southwest, in the Seventy-seventh Division. He was a sergeant there. I was still just a probationer, and since we were friends, he got himself assigned as my training officer. He was my partner for the first six months of my tour. After I finished probation, we rode together for six more months.”

  “Sergeants don’t usually ride with partners.”

  “Well, in the Seventy-seventh, a lot of the sergeants took a shotgun rider. It’s pretty hairy down there. Anyway, we rode together for that last six months, and then I got reassigned. I went to the West Valley Division for four years, then spent six in Metro. I’ve been back at Southwest for the past six years and in RHD down there for twenty-eight months. Ray was in Central, then Newton, so we didn’t see much of each other after that.”

  “I see.” Mayweather made some more notes on his pad. “You see him socially during that first tour in Southwest when you were partnered?”

  “Yes, sir, we were friends.”

  “Right about then you had an Internal Affairs complaint that wasn’t sustained, isn’t that correct?”

  “Excuse me, sir, but I thought I had immunity from background on unsustained IAD complaints.” Shane knew that since Mayweather was head of the Special Investigations Division, which supervised IAD, he had access to those old Internal Affairs records. Obviously, the deputy chief had done more than change clothes before coming in for this interview.

  Mayweather looked up and lay down his pen. “I’m just trying to determine if, when you were before that Board of Rights in March of ’84, you were still partnered with Ray Molar.”

  “Yes. That was just before we stopped working together.”

  “Okay.” Mayweather picked up his pen. “You say Lieutenant Molar pulled a gun. Did you see it clearly?”

  “I was only a few feet away.”

  “What kind of gun was it?”

  “I think it was a European handgun, a Titan Tiger snub-nose thirty-eight is what it looked like.”

  “That’s not a department-approved handgun.”

  “Well, he was at home. I suppose he can have any kind of weapon he wants at home.”

  “And then, after you shot him with your Beretta, what happened to his gun?”

  “I guess he dropped it. I don’t know, I was kind of jacked up after the shooting.”

  “Sergeant Scully, do you mind taking a urine test? As you know, you can refuse under the Police Bill of Rights, but I should warn you that in an administrative hearing, unlike a criminal case, your refusal can be viewed by the department as insubordination. You could be brought up on charges. If you do refuse, I’ll have to send for a DRE to examine you anyway, and his opinion will go in the record and carry the same weight.” A DRE was a drug recognition expert who would make a judgment on sobriety by observation, checking vision and reflexes.

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll take the test, sir,” Shane said.

  “I’ll get the paperwork ready.” He leaned over and picked up the phone. “This is Mayweather. Send somebody up from the lab for a urine sample and have whoever’s on the duty desk out there dig around and get me an authorization form.” He hung up the phone, having never shifted his gaze from Shane. Then he leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers under his chin.

  “Barbara Molar is quite an attractive woman.”

  “Yes, sir, she is. The lieutenant was very lucky.”

  “Until tonight.”

  “Well, yes, that’s what I meant, sir.

  “Right.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments.

  “Did you and Lieutenant Molar retain a friendly relationship after you were reassigned to the Valley Division?”

  “Well, sir…no. Like I said, we sort of drifted our separate ways.”

  “I heard you and he got into some kind of scuffle one night, back in ’84, just before you were separated as partners.”

  Shane looked over at Captain Halley for help, but the captain only nodded slightly, encouraging him to keep answering. It was now painfully obvious that Mayweather had someone in the IA Administration Section open his sealed jacket in violation of his rights under Section 202. The fight with Steeltooth had been logged because Shane had needed medical attention for his injuries. However, neither he nor Molar had pressed for a hearing, so it went into his sealed record as an unsustained incident. He couldn’t prove that Mayweather had opened his file. The deputy chief could claim he had heard about the fight secondhand. Now Shane had to answer the question or face insubordination charges. He felt used and double-crossed.

  “I need an answer,” Mayweather said. “Was there an altercation?”

  “I guess you could say that. We had a kinda problem once.”

  “What was that all about?”

  “Shit, it was nothing…. I mean, shoot…we…we’d been working long hours and I was nervous, facing that Internal Affairs board. I was stressed. Molar was fucking around. We were in the detective squad room in Southwest. He threw ice water on me, so I pushed him and he went down over a chair. If you knew Ray at all, you wouldn’t have to ask what happened next.�
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  “What happened next?”

  “We went down into the parking garage, and while six or seven guys from the squad stood around and watched, Ray punched out two of my teeth, broke my nose, and pretty much destroyed me.”

  “And you’re not mad about that?”

  “Well, for a while I guess, but that was Ray. He and I had just about ended our tour by then, so we unhooked. I was rotating out. He was on the lieutenant’s list back then. Pretty high up. The sixth band, I think, so he was going to get his bar in a month or two anyway. We both just moved on.”

  “And you didn’t harbor any resentment? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Chief, if I could ask…has anybody looked at the damage on Barbara Molar’s face? Has anybody seen what he did to her? ’Cause if all these questions strike to some other possible motive, that’s why I went over there. I tried to break it up. He fired first, and I was forced to return fire. He was seconds from killing both of us. I hope you photograph those injuries because all I was trying to do was keep us off Forest Lawn Drive.”

  “We’ll get photographs, don’t worry about that.”

  There was another charged silence in the room that lasted for almost a minute.

  “Anything else you want to say for this record?” Mayweather said.

  “No, sir. That’s what happened. I’m sorry he’s dead, but he gave me no choice.”

  “Okay, then.” Mayweather looked at his watch. “This interview is concluded. It is five thirty-five A.M. This tape recording has been continuous, with no shutoffs, and it has been witnessed throughout by Captain Bud Halley.” Then he snapped the machine off and rubbed his eyes. “That’s it, Sergeant. I’m going to forward this transcript to the Officer Involved Shooting Section of the Robbery/Homicide Division, and they will schedule your Shooting Review Board. Don’t sweat it. That board is mandatory with any incident involving firearms.”

  “I know, sir.”

  “Then get outta here. Go give the lab tech his sample and go home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shane got up and moved past Captain Halley, into the hall. He waited for his CO to come out, thinking they would ride down together and Shane could get a performance critique, but Captain Halley didn’t come out. The door was slightly ajar, and he could hear Mayweather and Halley talking. Then suddenly the door was kicked shut, cutting off the conversation and leaving him alone in the hall.

  4

  Street Divorce

  Shane was forced to wander in the Parker Center garage, looking for his car. It was six A.M. He had started on the top level, which was aboveground, and had moved slowly through the garage, heading down, deeper into the bowels of the parking structure. He had his keys in his right hand. They had been left for him at the OOD’s desk in Robbery/Homicide, but the uniform who had driven his car in didn’t tell the duty sergeant where in the garage it was parked. The structure was huge, and his bare feet were cold on the concrete floor. As he walked, he could occasionally see flashes of red on his feet—Ray’s blood. He had stood in it, and it had seeped up, between his toes, staining his skin. After giving his urine sample, he’d been in such a hurry to get out of there and get home, he hadn’t remained in the rest room to wash it off.

  “Sergeant Scully. Over here,” a voice yelled at him; he turned around and looked back. He could see two uniformed officers standing by the elevator. He was six stories down, and the garage was dimly lit by the neon overheads. The two policemen moved out of the darkness toward him. The overhead lighting threw long shadows under their visors, and he could not make out who they were. As they got closer, he realized he had not seen either of them before. It was not unusual for members of the LAPD not to know one another. There were over nine thousand sworn members of the department sprawled over a huge geographic area. From the markings on their uniforms, he could tell that they were both first-year officers—policemen I’s.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  They were close enough now for him to see that they were both in their early twenties. Their silver nameplates indicated that the shorter one was Officer K. Kono, the other, Officer D. Drucker. Kono had a wide, flat face and the complexion of a native Hawaiian. Drucker was a bodybuilder. His arms bulged the short sleeves of his Class C uniform shirt. They stood in front of Shane, studying him as if he were roadkill that one of them would eventually be forced to scrape up.

  “Whatta you want, Officer?” Shane asked Drucker. “I’ve had a long night. I wanna get home.”

  “That Ray’s blood on yer feet?” Kono asked. He had no Hawaiian accent. He was pure West Valley, but his voice was shaking with emotion.

  “Whatta you guys want?” Shane repeated.

  “Why’d you have t’butt in?” Drucker asked. “Who asked you?”

  Shane could now see that they were both extremely emotional. They had obviously heard about Ray’s death, which was spreading through the department like a raging virus. He speculated that Drucker and Kono must have come in and waited for him in the garage.

  “He was killing his wife. He was taking batting practice on her with a baton.”

  “So you butt in and give him a fucking street divorce,” Drucker hissed. A “street divorce” was police slang for any domestic argument that turned into a murder.

  “Get outta my way.” Shane tried to push past the two cops, but they held their ground and he found himself bumping shoulders with them violently. They weren’t about to let him through, so Shane backed up and reevaluated the situation. He didn’t have his gun. It had been booked by Homicide as evidence. He was alone in an empty garage. He was barefoot and tired, and his head still ached from where Ray had hit him. The two cops in front of him were jacked up on anger and out of control emotionally. In that moment, he had a flash of how it must feel to run up against enraged, violent cops in a desolate part of the city with no witnesses and no way to prove what really happened. Here he was, a sworn officer, standing in the police garage, yet he was beginning to pump adrenaline and fear for his safety.

  “Is this about to turn into something?” he asked softly, glaring at both of them.

  “Ray was the real deal, asswipe,” Drucker hissed. “You’re department afterbirth. Ray knew we had to take this fucking town back a street at a time. Since Rodney King, we’ve been eating shit and smiling about it. Ray knew that had to change. He knew the war was on, knew what we had to do out there. He understood you can’t just stand around while a buncha freeway-dancers put it to ya.”

  “If you believe that, both you guys need to take a swing through the Academy retraining program.”

  “Swing on my dick, Tarzan,” Kono hissed.

  Shane shook his head and smiled. “Okay,” he said, “I guess that ends this discussion. Your move.”

  “This is police headquarters,” Drucker said. “This is the Glass House, man. Nothing happens here. But stick around, Scully. There’s gonna be some payback.”

  “Now you’re threatening me, Drucker?”

  “You killed the best cop to ever ride in this department,” Kono said. “Shot him just ’cause he was straightening out his old lady? Okay, it’s done. Ray’s gone. But we loved him, man, we—” He stopped, and Shane thought he saw moisture in the young Hawaiian cop’s eyes.

  “You two guys need to go home and think this out,” Scully said.

  “We don’t need to think nothin’ out,” Drucker snapped. “You think it out. We’ve got someone pulling your card right now. From now on, nobody’s gonna take your side. Nobody’s got your back, Scully. You’re a walk-alone.”

  “I’m putting you both in for this.”

  “Have fun,” Drucker said, touching the brim of his visor. “Your word against ours. Have a nice morning, asshole.” They both turned and walked away. He could hear their footsteps echoing in the concrete darkness. Then a car started, headlights went on, and they pulled past him, going fast. The wind from their black-and-white flapped his sweatshirt as they sped away.

  Shane s
tood alone in the garage; he suddenly felt a shiver of dread come over him. Then he turned and again started looking for his car. He found it way down on U-9, at the back of the garage, on the bottom level. When he looked at the car, something seemed wrong, it seemed lower. He knelt down in the dim light and saw that all four of his tires had been slashed. The black Acura was squatting sadly on its rims.

  “Shit,” he said, looking at the car. Then he suddenly remembered Chooch. He wondered how he would ever get home in time to get the boy to school.

  5

  Chooch

  Shane arrived home at a little past seven, driving a slickback he’d checked out of the motor pool. He parked the black-and-white detective’s car in the driveway and entered the back door. As he walked into the kitchen, Chooch was bent over with his head deep in the refrigerator. Startled, he jerked around and glowered.

  “It’s fucking bleak in there, Chuck. Don’t you got nothin’ to eat?” Chooch was dressed in baggy jeans pulled down low, gang-style, exposing two inches of his red plaid boxer shorts. His white T-shirt read EAT ME.

  “There’s some strawberry Pop-Tarts in that cupboard,” Shane said as he quickly headed through the kitchen, hoping Chooch wouldn’t see his bloodstained feet and put him through a description of the early-morning shooting. Shane moved into the master bedroom, which was furnished in “relationship-eclectic.” Nothing matched. All the furniture in his house was salvaged from broken love affairs. It had gotten to the point where every time he and a new female roommate went furniture shopping, there was some cynical side of him that would wonder which of the new bedroom or living-room ensemble pieces would become his in the post-relationship settlement. The result was a depressing mixture of colors and styles.

  He stripped off his blood-spattered sweatshirt and pants, then got into a hot shower, scrubbing Ray’s blood off his feet with his shower nailbrush, rubbing so hard that he was afraid his toes would bleed.